Division? Probably Not

Govt in California is pretty messed up. There are a lot of people here, 38 million officially but another 10 million illegals, with a lot of different needs and values and due to the nature of votes for everybody, it is a numbers game so minorities get squashed under a steam roller of voter oppression, often steered by loud demogogues in the media.

It's not a fair system. It is exactly what the Founding Fathers feared. California isn't a Republic. It's an unhinged Democracy with the same failings as Athens, which was eventually destroyed by its insane voters denying reality and blaming their minority, the single largest failing of a Democracy. The system here has hurt millions over the decades and most people are so fed up by it that their goals are to have enough money to ignore it. The most common approach to acquiring wealth is to ignore politics and focus on business. This is why most voters are ignorant and only give passing notice to demogogues on TV ranting about how they should vote. This is an unstable and ineffective and destructive system, and it drives division and anger.

And so the state sometimes brew up interesting plans, like the one to divide California into 6 different states, based on county lines and general interests so fewer people have power over others completely different. Above is a proposed map, which I don't quite agree with. Here's my map and the explanation of why.

 

Note the black lines where I've semi-arbitrarily divided counties from populous to underrepresented because they're in different regions or watersheds, or too far to commute. The counties in question would need to ratify this division and pick new names. Western Sonoma County and Marin County will probably ask to join North Coast since they're too rural for commuting and mostly aligned with the North Coast, doing fishing and tourism. Santa Barbara may wish to join Southern California, but the Wineries probably want to be part of Central Coast since its more friendly to agriculture. I included the western side of plumas county as Cascadia (aka Jefferson) because the division between the Sierra-Nevada range and the Cascades runs down the Feather River. The primary economic concerns in Cascadia are pot growing and meth, with transportation and some logging being the primary industries. Its very poor there and not much going on. This map is pretty close to how California SHOULD be divided up.

Bay Area should be the Bay Area Counties where people commute into the SF Bay to work. North California is stupid and needs to go. Sonoma County has nothing in common with Truckee or Sierraville. The Central Valley should have its own state because its interests are different from the Mountains. Owens River Valley deserves to belong to Eastern Sierra, which should run from the Mojave desert to Reno. And I would include Sacramento Valley to Red Bluff down to Bakersfield as one state because their interests are mostly agriculture and water for agriculture. The LA basin is largely aligned with San Diego and the Seaside Communities, but I'd put Santa Barbara in the same state as Monterey and San Luis Obispo and the Salinas Valley because they're tied together in a balance of Agriculture and rich land owners and mansions. The alternative is to associate the wine country areas with either agriculture or richer cities, meaning their interests become more about tourism and less about profits. Southern California needs to focus entirely on LA basin and coast, and its influence should end at the desert. South California should just be renamed Mojave should be the desert areas with its focus on water rights and agriculture, with its economic focus in Las Vegas. Most people just drive through on the way there, after all. When it gets too expensive to Fly, Vegas is DOOMED. And indian casinos are doing a great job of making Vegas less and less relevant. I don't think "Silicon Valley" deserves to be a state. It's all Bay Area and Bay Area problems. It should include Marin and Napa and Vacaville and Livermore and Santa Cruz and probably Monterey and Sonoma County, since people commute into SF for work. The Salinas Valley would be better served shifting into San Joaquin, and while San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys are very similar in agricultural interests, one has water and the other has reservoirs but is mostly desert, so they're not quite the same. Jefferson's borders I pretty much agree with as is, though coastal redwoods and fishing isn't the same as chaparral ranching, but both areas are largely economically dependent on soon to be bankrupt pot farmers.

This means that Central California needs to run from Hwy 49 on the East over to the West side of the Salinas Valley, unless the residents there prefer to associate with the coast, since 101 runs through there to tie it together, and 101 doesn't close like 1 does. Coastal California might need to be 2 states, a Central Coast from Santa Barbara up to Pacifica, and a north coast from Stinson Beach up to the Oregon. Coastal cities are aligned over fishing and tourism. That's most of what they can do. They'll be pretty broke and spend most of their money on roads and emergency services for the tourists and locals so car wrecks aren't fatal. The SF Bay breaks it up and while there's a tiny fraction of fishing and a fair bit of port services on the Bay itself, its mostly sweat shops and rich people lording it over the poor. Not a nice place. I've lived there for the last decade and did not enjoy it at all. The biggest problem with Port Cities is immigration drives down wages and drives up rents, so people are violent cutthroats over the pressure. And they can't leave because the Valley dwellers kill them or scare them off. When I worked with green cards and new citizens, they were scared to death of travel outside their ghettos. They believed strongly that they would be killed, so they paid too much for rent, for food, and got paid too little for work, basically enhancing misery. And I had to work around that. Not nice. So SF Bay is a cesspit and needs to remain treated as such. The borders should conform to where people commute from, though I'm deliberately ignoring Tracy and Manteca and Stockton because gasoline prices and falling wages in the Bay Area make that less and less affordable all the time. And the ACE train over the Altamont Pass is expensive, too expensive for any but urban professionals to use, and why do they? Is that time so cheap?

The real reason to divide up California is the ethnic groups and interests are no longer able to work together. In pure voting power, large portions of California are completely ignored, in a similar way that the East Coast ignores the Flyover States. Dividing up the Ungovernable California into places which make sense locally is the right answer. And it makes sense more if it means that water rights get re-negotiated from the crimes they currently are into something a bit more fair. Owens Valley used to be fertile farmland like the Salinas Valley. Then LA stole their water and most of the "protected" land is dead now. LA is evil. And people are dying from the dust. That's murder, 2nd degree, but still murder.

It is likely that Sacramento and San Joaquin will take as much water as they can from their respective rivers to expand farmland, which will go back to killing the salmon and smelt that they could care less about because Salmon is for coastal fishermen. The central valley is all about truck crops and rice and orchards. They need the water, and those crops are worth $3-5 Billion dollars a year. Think about that. That's way more than Hollywood, which stripped of its votes and bully pulpit will be nicely helpless down in LA, which won't get all that easy water pumped over the hill from the Grapevine near Bakersfield. Boo hoo. I guess LA will have to invest in desalination and build the solar power and wind arrays to run them, and I am guessing it will cost a lot of money and stink really bad since LA dumps barely treated sewage into the ocean. Oops! I suspect that people might not want to live there when LA stops being a "miracle in the desert" and has to actually live within its means instead of exploit me and everyone else up north. FY, LA. FY hard.

In any case, the North Coast, which is mostly mountainous should probably be its own state. I'd probably set it up from Mendocino County up to the Oregon Border and Divide it from the East near I-5. I might include Redding in the state, but it might be smarter to put Redding with the eastern part running to the Nevada Border, since its mountains and central looking rather than coastal. That entire region needs industry to occupy its population, something more healthy than growing pot and brewing meth. Timber is mostly cut, and so heavily mechanized it didn't offer many jobs. Fishing is pretty well ruined due to the California Aqueduct near Tracy killing all the salmon since 1979. There's still some from local rivers, but sedimentation is so severe due to clear cuts that the rivers need to be restored and a lot of trees and erosion control needs to be planted, and the timber industry already got rich and bailed out, so why would they? The NW Sacramento Valley is in rain shadow.

See how dry the central valley is? Its completely dependent on irrigation water to grow crops. The upside to the lack of precipitation is your crops don't get ruined by rainfall growing mold and rotting the fruit or grain before you can harvest. These are ideal growing conditions, really. Farmers can make MONEY that way. The downside is that without a functional irrigation system managed fairly, farms can be shut off, bankrupted, and eaten by farmers with the money to bribe or control the water supply, so corruption and exploitation are a huge problem. These are called Water Wars for a good reason. Its not pie in the sky theoretical. It is ironic, but the proposed Jefferson's west side has too much water, and the East has too little. The obvious answer is to capture it in reservoirs and pump it east by aqueduct, however there are mountains in the way. And tunnels cost billions. The pumps also kill salmon since they follow the stream and once the water temp gets too high, they die. So moving the water is both energy intensive and destructive. And it gets worse. Without a significant drop in erosion in those NW mountains, the reservoir would fill with sediment before the dams and canals are finished being built. Its really that bad. So a project like that is actually doomed from the start, which is the primary reason it has never been done. There's also no geographic or material advantage to build industry there so nobody does. It is empty of value, and has too much rain and erosion. Sucks to be up there and getting its own state won't help. There isn't even reason for tourism so don't expect to pay for roads either. It will go back to the wild.

The most likely outcome of the above California division fantasies? No division. Things will stay the same. LA will protect its water by exploiting the North. The farmers will keep killing salmon because the North Coast doesn't have the votes to stop them. Farmers will also continue to attack immigration reform because illegals make them money. SF Bay needs San Joaquin water too, and the rest of the state will pay taxes to subsidize their abusive lifestyles. Things will largely continue.

And for every family fed up and leaving California for saner places, more will come to replace them. More suckers. California has great weather, but you pay and pay for that. Sensible divisions just won't happen. Isn't that sad?

Disengage

Since I started studying international politics after discovering how they interact with the stock market, back when I was 11 years old, I eventually came to conclude that America is hurting itself every time I saves a competitor or enemy from tyranny. We are insane to help countries that hate us. I'm in favor of isolationism, which is a hilariously hated "extremist view" according to people heavily invested in weapons manufacturing or dope smoking. Sometimes those are the same people. Leftists are really big on the hypocrisy, and anyone religious is insane by definition.

Ways isolationism helps American citizens:

1. Jobs. Manufacturing has been lost to China. Close the borders, no more imports, and manufacturing has to be done here. Things will cost more, but everyone will be able to work.
2. Wages. No more illegal aliens cheating minimum wage laws. Wages will stabilize and the middle class can recover.
3. Ends famine. Famine happens because American grain is too cheap. Overseas farmers can't make a living selling their harvest at our price. Increase the costs of grain and more farmers overseas can make a living, so they'll grow food, which means in the event of a bad harvest here, the entire world isn't starving, since the entire world eats American grain. 2 billion people exist because of US grain exports. That has to stop. It is a food bubble.
4. Higher grain prices allows farmers to pay off their debts and own their farms and hire people at proper wages and benefits. Like real companies, not black market enterprises using illegals for labor.
5. No tax havens for evil corporations. They either pay their fair share in the USA or they get shut down and fined billions for breaking the law. Put the IRS after the big money, stop harassing the little guy.
6. Ends slavery. Many companies manufacturing products in China and Vietnam have virtual slaves making your smartphone and tablet. That is morally wrong. Blocking trade with slavery is the ethical thing to do, and enables jobs in the USA. Of course, PAYING employees means the products will cost more, but you won't be profiting from slavery either.
7. Ends war profiteering. The USA is engaged in wars all over the world because our weapons makers can sell there. The number of jobs really isn't that many, but the profits and death are huge, and result in campaign contributions to unethical politicians that keep the wars going. Too much blood is spilled for a few to benefit. That needs to end. And complaining that the English, French, Germans and Russians will just step into the gap is no excuse. We have standards. Time to actually live them.
8. Ends oil imports and involvement in the Persian Gulf, which is a mess of ideologies and murder that will starve without US grain. They should not be our problem, and we should not be involved there. Once sufficient Fracking is working in domestic US locations, it will help defray shortages caused by OPEC temper tantrums.
9. Bond market inflation stops since the Federal Reserve Corporation cannot Home prices will fall, to match actual wages of working people. Home pricing should be market driven, not inflated by Chinese buying T-bills. Houses should not cost more than a luxury car. My parents first house was $17K in Mill Valley, Marin County, California. My generation should not be paying $350K for that same place. Wages did not inflate to match. Inflation corrected price should be around $90K. This is where the market needs to be for homes to make sense.

This is by no means a smooth transition. There will be huge shifts in the economy by opening factories to make what Asia makes. The sticker shock for a pair of shoes or spatula will be harsh, at first. We'll get used to it, and employed people aren't burglarizing their neighbor's car. Employed people can pay a mortgage instead of paying too much for rent. Employed people can buy a new car, and invest in the stock market, and have their retirement funds grow. They buy things when they have income. This is what it takes to fix our broken economy. We will have to get electric rail, and we will have to accept that we aren't going to get enough oil to run all our cars for daily commutes, sorry. There just isn't enough to go around once we close our borders. Both Mexico and Canada want to sell oil out of the country, and US oil companies have been pushing to drop the embargo for oil exports because US prices aren't as profitable as selling to Europe for a tidy profit. That sales would also make gasoline double in price, just to help you understand. Unless your general income is from oil company stock dividends, that won't help you.

Eventually, we're all going to be working down the street. Whether we move down the street close to the job we like, or work for less near the place we like to live is up to us. Either choice has a cost. And sometimes that cost is too high. However, allowing globalism to destroy America, financially, and wipe out the Middle Class, has shown to be a total disaster for all but the very rich and evil politicians who take the bribes. I'm in favor of destroying both of those to save Us. So disengage from an evil world and focus on American problems, and fix those with closed borders.

Farming Needs To Pay More

Farmers don't get paid enough. They take terrible risks at the mercy of the weather for every crop they grow, and if all goes well, their competitors drive down the price due to supply and demand. Farming is terrible that way. Most farmers try to grow multiple crops to protect themselves from disaster so they have enough income to pay the mortgage, which most farmers owe lots of money on, and the need to invest in heavy equipment to avoid hiring people since Obamacare made health insurance benefits so expensive mechanization is a better investment. It all sucks, really. But farming is critical. America is a not a manufacturing economy anymore. Its primary industries are agriculture and tourism. High Tech is mostly going to China, since Americans are always willing to export their technology to cheap manufacturing in order to punish American workers for having the nerve to ask for wages for their work. This is why real unemployment is so high. And the only people thriving in this economy are stock market investors who own those companies firing Americans and building things in China instead. This won't work forever.

Unemployed Americans are a burden on society. They still get to vote, so they vote themselves benefits. They'll eventually demand their officials tax those big corporations, who will simply move overseas to be untaxable. Attempts to tax investors will move those investments overseas and international trust funds will send living expense money back, reducing the tax burden on them dramatically, especially if things are structured right. And you don't get rich by spending stupidly. You don't stay rich by being stupid either.

So, yes. We need more jobs. I think the answer is to pay farmers more. Correct the prices on food. If international markets want to grow more of their own, let them. International markets have shown they breed more hungry mouths faster than they grow their own economies. Charging more for the food they eat is a win for us, and motivates them to do something more useful. The USA has largely ideal growing conditions in the Midwest and California, provided there is sufficient water. The Great Basin needs more water, but that's available from the Columbia River provided an Aqueduct is built to carry it through Eastern Oregon and northern Nevada. Crops could be grown there. Fields closed due to drought could be restored. Towns could grow and flourish, with land for all those hungry mouths, mouths willing to stop living in Poverty in Oakland and Stockton and South Sacramento and make something of themselves.

Right now farming pays less than minimum wages and often requires 18 hours a day. Farmers are in massive debt to have enough land and equipment to work it to raise a large enough crop to pay for that, and they don't always profit if something goes wrong. Govt offers farm subsidies so crops can be grown that lose money, usually because those crops are grown in stupid places because a farm is better than no farm, thus southern Arizona's Yuma River Valley. The trouble with that is all linked to the commodities market, as best I can tell. Eventually, farmers will need to sit down and probably organize higher prices. The market won't like that, but they'd be able to pay off their farm debts and make sufficient profit to pay non-Mexicans full wages instead of $1.50/hr. Mexicans would like that too, since they could send more money home. Unfortunately, they are willing to work for almost nothing for farm hands are grossly underpaid. The system as it stands is broken.

Imagine that farm hands made $15/hr. And that minimum wage laws were enforced on all employers, including farmers. Prices would go up, as would the cost of food, but it would go up for everybody, including foreigners they're exporting grain to, so that's fine. If being a farm hand pays more than flipping burgers, it is a job worth doing. Farm hands generally work in rural areas where home are plentiful and cheap. And I mean homes, not apartments. At $15/hr in Colusa or Williams or Marysville, you can afford a mortgage. You don't have to be a burglar to make ends meet, or waste time and money commuting to Sacramento for minimum wage because you can't get minimum wage jobs in those rural towns. Too many cheap Mexican laborers, paying kickbacks on their wages to their managers because they're used to corruption and don't mind it. I often wonder if that's why Mexicans working at Taco Bell always look so angry. They're probably NOT getting minimum wage. Having illegal economies in America undercuts the entire thing, and I think that's why so many people are unemployed. Well, that and destroying the Middle Class seems to be a primary motivation of the current two party system. Things aren't working.

Being a farmer doesn't pay enough. That has to change. Land prices are too high. Wholesale and commodity prices are too low. If Farmers owned their lands, owned their tractors and combines, and had financial cushion to absorb crop losses rather than being bled dry by insurance fees and low profits, they'd be able to pay employees, farm hands, to do the work so they weren't working inhuman 18 hour days which leads to the mistakes that cause death and dismemberment rates the highest of any profession, including the Military and Police. Its interesting how the political parties ignore this, because farmers don't have enough votes or pay enough graft to matter. They get their subsidies and that's good enough, right?

I grew up with a cattle ranch behind my house. And vineyards a mile away, behind the local fire station. Matanzas Creek makes a very good Chardonnay. That's a type of agriculture that pays, though not as much as they'd like. Wineries eventually became boutique tax shelters for richer corporations that own them and allow the vintners to carry on making award winning wines the owners can brag about on the gold course. For their purposes, this works. And the wines end up subsidized cheaper so the Middle Class can drink them and provide income to keep the wineries funded the rest of the way. Its fine. Vegetable farmers do subscription farm boxes, but that only works if the veggies are better quality and more convenient than the farmers market. Orchards can deliver fruit or even premium jams under subscription or website mail order. This works well so long as shipping costs are reasonable and the product doesn't break. UPS and FedEx are both pretty rough with packages. Their job is to get it to you. Not to get it to you unbroken. Package it carefully to take shocks in every direction.

If your primary market in farming is rich people, be aware that expensive food is a fad, and fads end. Real quality is grown in your own garden. The rest is convenience, and ignorance rules the market shelves, with veggies chosen on appearance rather than invisible properties like nutritional content you can't see and can't measure without lab equipment. Getting cheated at the supermarket is all too common. This is why housewives and thrifty singles buy on sales and shop in multiple locations because every dollar counts. Farmers must find the middle ground, particularly as oil gets more expensive and transportation costs start to matter more than they used to.

Tourism and agriculture combine nicely in orchard country pie shops, in vineyards with B&Bs and bicycle rental companies, and all the various fun people can get up to surrounded by ripening crops and the fruits of harvest. Couples find it inspiring. Foodies love the flavors. Bargain hunters love the prices and direct quality. And Gear Heads love the twisty roads. Its all good. I am not a city person so I don't see the appeal of being surrounded by hungry, angry people. I like the countryside better. Apparently, this makes me eccentric. Maybe more people will get eccentric if farming pays enough to make it a real career of choice rather than necessity.

AGW Irony

So a ship filled with grantees went to Antarctica to "study" the retreat of sea ice in Southern Hemisphere's summer. They got stuck in ice because there was way more than anticipated. As in ironic levels of ice rather than melted nothing or bare stone shores. Their predictions were completely wrong. The news reports have been making sure not to point out how ironic this is, how its proof that AGW is a lie. Now they're calling it Climate Change, which removes the warming and is rather pointlessly vague. We already have weathermen. They can't predict more than 3 days with the best technology and the least violated models.

It gets better. John Kerry has a bunch of AGW shills, because they aren't scientists but evangelists and so shouldn't be paid due to separation of Church and State laws, and he insists that AGW be part of all visits to every country he goes to. This is rather hilariously bad for US international image as a bunch of freaky wackjobs, like that guy at the dinner party ranting about some tin-foil hat theory of his that people just want to escape from. If you ruin dinner parties you stop being invited. This is what American international efforts have become.

Since I'm personally in favor of the USA withdrawing from the international sphere and fixing problems at home with our money, and leaving international problems to their inevitable conclusions, this actually serves my purposes. An incompetent crazy govt does great things for my agenda. So continue, Mr. Kerry. Be a nincompoop. You're the best possible answer to the John Birch Society's vision. And the vision of any isolationist political groups. You've proved the USA isn't trustworthy and can't be counted on.

So long as crazy people are running the US govt, they will show it in international circles that whatever power and prestige this country earned over the last century is lost, probably forever. The voters put these politicians in power, and say too little against them so to the world, we're the tinfoil wearing party crasher. The bearded weirdo. If you favor sanity, shave off your beard. Lose the hippy beads. Settle down and think like a grown up, not a junkie. And have a good laugh at the irony of that ship stuck in ice trying to prove there's no ice.

Hot Hatch

I own a sensible Japanese sedan. Its big, has leather seats. I bought it because my wife and I needed it for her commutes and wanted a family eventually. My sensible sedan has a V6 engine. Its smooth, stable, and boring. The VTEC never engages because, as I can best determine, it was only included as a sales gimmick. The car isn't setup to allow you to rev high enough before shifting gears to ever turn on the second cam, at 4500 RPMs. Never happens. This is really annoying because the car is heavy and slow without that power boost that never happens. The upside is the engine is fuel efficient and is so detuned it just runs and runs. I'm 165K miles on it. Changed the timing belt twice. It's reliable. Just not fun. It's comfy, but not fun. It's slow and stable on the highway, but hard to apex turns with. It has more seats that I need 95% of the time. So really, what I want is something smaller, more fun, with zip, that seats me. That means a hot hatchback, realistically. Or possibly a coupe that's light enough to matter. So many coupes are heavy, all that damned safety equipment. I grew up driving on deadly roads that killed or wrecked someone every weekend. I want my fun back, you Nerfherders.

In the Forza 3 Racing simulator for my Xbox 360, I've been driving various cars, including hot hatches. Those are honestly fun. Probably uncomfortable, but fun. So long as I can fix the rattles and squeaks and put in an MP3 stereo, and A/C for the hot summers, I'm good. I'd want a serious suspension, possibly with adjustable ride height, and possibly upgraded with those iron filings with electromagnets in the shocks because that's wonderful technology I want. This being California, your choices are all the Japanese cars, or dealing with "They All Do That" American low-quality, or German imports like VW and Audi which are very expensive and generally have poor fit and finish compared to the Japanese. In the game, the Fords are surprisingly fun to drive, but having been in a compact Ford, I know they're cheap plastic panels inside, rattle, and are really unstable at speed and not the best engines. Not that good. Any sort or modifications from aftermarket would likely help with handling and stability and probably power and reliability too. Still, is there a better starting point?

Automatic transmission is the thing for traffic exhaustion, especially stop and go commuting. Manual or paddles are for mountain roads. Paddles would be NICE, never having had them, but what cars have paddles yet are still light and grippy enough to do hill climbs properly so they're fun? I wonder if the Golf GTI turbo has paddle shifters? 217 bhp would make it really fun. Why fun instead of a Turbo Diesel? Because I'm tired of waiting for Doom and Gloom. I've been waiting since I saw Red Dawn in the 1980's and its still not here yet. Not like I could survive the apocalypse anyway. Whom am I kidding? May as well enjoy life while I can.

If Iran decides to destroy all it has gained, then I guess a Turbo Diesel is in my future, but it would probably be a Subaru since the roads would be next to fall apart, and ground clearance matters on crappy roads. For a long while I wanted a motorcycle, and a convertible. Convertibles are heavy and impossible to lock up on the street. Too many hoodlums with box knives can cut them open to burglarize or vandalize them. And A/C doesn't work in a convertible. They're about being seen, and having open sky above your head. Fun, I'm sure, but not good enough. The roads I like are twisty, and reward good suspensions and fast acceleration and throttle response. Fast gear changes, hard braking, all that good stuff. I have greatly enjoyed hill climbs. Driving up a hill fast is a rush. I used to do the Auburn Canyon in a sports car that wasn't running quite right, and it was fun, but I really destroyed that car in the process. If it had been working right, and a competent mechanic had restored it properly, possibly myself, including all the EFI, it would have lasted and been a much more fun vehicle for that drive. Unfortunately, that car was heavy, underpowered, and falling apart.

We live in unfortunate times, and finding joy is a matter of lowered expectations rather than fast toys. I can afford digital driving simulators. I can't afford the real thing. What a pity.

Virtual Racing With Forza 3

Its pretty, but its not perfect. I favor its highly realistic physics. It corners like a real car does. The grip is affected by pavement surface and suspension, just like the real world. The scenery streams by, as it should. Its great fun. And the initial boring tracks get a few additions worth driving, like a mountain road in Japan, a seaside road on the coast of Amalfi through a town, and the Nurburgring, which is really fast and really tough to get right.

Screwing up happens. I like that the game has a rewind button so when you crash, you can rewind, breathe for a moment, and try again. I like that the cars can get squirrelly and flip if you get the tires rolling the wrong ways, just like the real world. Some cars are strictly straight line. They need a lot of upgrades to the suspension and tires to corner properly. The most fun to drive are the hot hatches. Hopefully there are tweaks to help mid-engine cars corner better, but stock setups tend to suck, which is surprising. I like that the game just gives you cars to drive. Many are really fun to see how their power and weight distribution affect them. My biggest surprise vehicle was a Peugeot 206 SS, AWD, is a surprisingly fast and zippy car, even if it sounds like an angry sewing machine with a turbo charger in full boost. Fun though. I would never own one in the real world. Its French and would be unreliable with nobody to fix it. They don't sell those in the USA.

Still, the biggest upside of virtual racing is its cheap. An Xbox 360 is $200-250. A driving wheel with feedback is $30-250, depending on features and pedals. Use your computer monitor because its much higher res than an HDTV, which requires around $15 in plugs and cables to hook up, and you're good to go. I now have two sets of speakers, but I could have used plugs to make what I've got work, as is. All that compared to a set of tires? Cheap. No car insurance required for virtual racing.

I just wish there were games based on my favorite California roads, and that the games had more traffic to dodge around and pass. Forza only has 8 cars, and you usually ditch them after a few turns because they seem to be programmed suicidal. The developer wrote them that way because players don't like to lose races. I'd rather have proper competition, myself. Picking when to pass and where is a huge rush, after all, and its virtual, so wrecks aren't real. I have tweaked the settings to make the other cars more competent. Eventually I'll play it without driver assists, like autobraking and stability control, which will be more like the real thing.

I've read reviews of Forza 4, with Top Gear stuff in it. Sounds good, will own eventually. I'm a big fan of the show and enjoy Clarkson's snide comments, even if he's a big doofus Redneck Yobbo, which is the British equivalent of a Hillbilly.

I also read reviews of Forza Horizon, which is odd sounding but has a lot of free play driving and weird events. I've also read reviews of Dirt 3, which is rally racing with a few other bits, and might be really fun as well. I know I like the twisty mountain roads with all the special cornering, braking, and throttle control best. Ovals bore me. High speeds bore me. Chicanes are annoying and cause wrecks.

Speaking of wrecks the damage system in Forza is terrible. Its smash up derby. You can bash into other cars and its mostly just cosmetic. There's no impact on the car performance. That's lazy programming. I wish they'd set that up so there's actual performance consequences there. EDIT: There IS a setting for that. Fixed. Should be more realistic now. The games are more fun when you have to avoid crashing, the other drivers stay on the road like they should in the real world, and they're aggressive like in the real world. I suspect I will replay this game in normal mode instead of casual gamer, to see if it makes it more fun. It's also interesting that in side quests (rallies), the other drivers are much more plausible than the main series.

Speaking of, I bought, in the game, a Toyota Yaris and lowered it, gave it better suspension and tires, and raced it in the appropriate class, complete with stripe and a grey hare on the trunk lid. It looks hilarious, but its fast. You know, cheap hatchbacks with some performance upgrades are really fun. They corner great, they're light so accelerate fast, and they're zippy so can dodge around. If I were into real world racing, I think I'd do those, not the big expensive fast cars. I also learned that the Fiat 500 Abarth is crap at cornering, the Lotus Exige gets loose in the tail end and isn't much better, and the various Ford hot hatches (Siesta SS and Focus RS) are really FUN. They're probably ideal for a racing series or sleeper mountain sprinters. As I do this more, I avoid alcohol and find my mind getting sharper with each successive race. It is good brain exercise and wonderful motivation for proper health. How about that?

So if you finding yourself needing a hobby and wanting to sharpen up your mind, this is probably a good one. Excellent for fine motor control. Just be sure to get a driving wheel. Its painfully hard to play with the standard controller. And setup the level so its a little more plausible. Driving alone is dullsville.

Farming in 2014

Okay, so I'm back.

I forgot that one of the reasons I got this thing in the first place is I wanted full editorial control over my writing and didn't want to post all my ideas on Survivalblog.com which has its own particular slant, despite being run by a writing colleague I've known 20 years. He's into bunkering, I'm into problem solving, both of us are largely convinced there are too many bad people running around loose. We deal with that our own ways.

I like transportation and working. He wants an independent farm or ranch but lacks the knowledge and money to actually do it in a place that makes sense so struggles on in Idaho rather than knuckle down in California where the growing season is twice as long. He's from farm country in Mendocino county, you see. Out by Boonville in Anderson Valley. A hard place to make a living, but better than the Palouse Hills in Idaho. If you're going to be a farmer, do it where you can grow things and sell them for a profit. Otherwise you're handicapping yourself and that's both expensive and foolish, in my opinion. As my Uncle and Grandfather were both farmers, and I grew up in farming (vineyards and wineries) and ranch country in Sonoma County (California), I do have some deeper understanding of this. I don't do it myself, but I'm interested in the subject. It is a core industry in California, far more valuable than High Tech or Movies or Tourism.

Agriculture.com is interesting. It's a website for agriculture news, for farmers. I've watching some good trends in Agriculture and the ones I find the most interesting are:

• Electric tractors, with solar panels on barns charging battery banks to charge tractors overnight for use the next day. There are now electric combines and solar powered wells for irrigation, replacing field engines who get their fuel stolen or stop running. PV is cheaper and more reliable.
• Biodiesel is a good stop-gap fuel until electric farm vehicles are cheaper and more efficient. Farm vehicles running on farm diesel avoids the pitfalls of gasoline going bad. Biodiesel with hobby level refining of oil feedstocks are very important. Having all farm vehicles running diesel or alcohol keeps costs down, so include ATVs and side by sides with a small hitch on the back for a trailer or other farm accessory. While I like motorcycles for their power to weight ratio, ATVs are more practical on farms, thus you see many of them in the real world.
• Agricultural telemetry is a new-ish thing, and has a huge future for IT nerds willing to work with real world environments with dirt, corrosion, and water. On advanced vineyards, you can find Wifi remote thermometers and humidity sensors reporting to a hub displaying a map and controlling irrigation. This automates irrigation so fields don't die in the heat. A big problem here and cuts costs of water as well as improves quality of plants. Better grapes grown in marginal lands that cost a fraction as much as the natural environment in the Napa and Alexander valley, which is most ideal for vineyards. If you're growing in the Foothills or Lake County, where its hotter and there's no fog and your water is coming from drilled wells, you need this to make it work.
• Drip irrigation is most efficient and cheap way to grow veggies for home or farmers market. Less water, all goes on plants, no water for weeds, means less effort to run them. Set them on a timer, upgrade to telemetry someday. Integrate controls into your farming server or PC to manage them. Start simple and small, grow complicated later.
• Cheap greenhouses with heat opening hatches to let out excess heat, and thermostat controlled heaters to prevent freezing inside means plants can be started in flats and transplanted later, for a much earlier start once frosts are over. This improves yields and lengthens their growing season.
• Leaf grinders and soil amendments are a great way to improve soil and enhance fertility. Rice hulls are excellent for mechanical aeration and last 10 years in the ground. This being California, rice hulls are cheap and necessary since the volcanoes make for sticky clay soils. Tilling farm waste into the ground has its pros and cons. You have to watch out for bugs and do your crop rotation to starve them out. This is WHY we do crop rotation in the first place.
• Levees are likely to break, even with maintenance. State is unwilling to dredge river bottoms, and basic hydraulic physics means those rivers cut their banks and S curve, naturally. There is no escape from flooding without raising surrounding land. Dredging the bottoms is cheaper. Shifting topsoil and placing the dredgings below is cheaper. Nobody is doing that. The penalties will be huge, with topsoil washed away and seasonal lakes wrecking land next to levees along the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. This is a multi-billion dollar project that must be done to delay inevitable land loss to flooding and resulting famine, which always brings war. This must be done in California and in the South.
• Hobby Farmers are seeking elusive farming knowledge, unburdened by economic realities of profitability. Farmers cannot afford to stare in happiness. They mostly worry and wonder if the crops will sell for more than it cost to grow, and if the weather will cooperate. Growing where there is sufficient water, under your control, and good weather typically, reduces the negative factors and gives you the advantages.

This brings up real estate. I live above the Sierra Foothills on the East side of the Sacramento Valley. Marysville and Yuba City below me are a major rice growing region, with orchards to the north (nuts and fruits), worth billions a year, with their water coming from the river flowing about 8 miles north of me, the Yuba. The rice grown there feeds over 1 billion people in Asia, mainly Japan and China. Neither country can grow enough food for themselves, due to either lacking mechanization (China) or a willing workforce (Japan). We grow their food, and essentially dominate their ability to survive because we can cut them off. This is big and important, though never directly stated. Its only a threat if we don't use it. If we do, its genocide. Thus this is a powerful political weapon to counter their purchase of US T-bills.

Farm towns in agricultural areas in California are largely Spanish speaking but this is not the only way forever. With a lack of employment opportunities and mechanization, there are still White people in farming. While African Americans are largely disinterested in it, highly dismissive even, none of us may have much choice in the matter. If you aren't able to underbid Asian manufacturing contracts in the City, you are completely dependent on govt aid to eat, and that's only important so long as you vote or threaten riots that don't provoke deadly response from police or national guard. A fine line. Eventually your value is too low and we know what happens, historically, to those populations.

Whites consider themselves too good for stoop labor, but like vineyards and wine making, like gardening, and grow far too much sensamilla in marginal lands. They're fine with mechanized farming, they just don't like short handled hoes or picking cotton by hand. And short handled hoes are where fields of tomatoes come in. Mechanize that and Mexican labor will be struggling since they tend to be illegals and not invest in local land. They send their wages back to their wife and children in Mexico. And that opens farm town real estate to for-profit white farmers.

Most farm towns in the Sacramento valley are dusty, and at least half empty. They are a good opportunity for general contractors who want to buy a distressed property, renovate, and flip for a profit. Just be sure the properties are either in the little farm towns with active fields and orchards, or in those fields and orchards. Most farmers walk to work, and most farm workers hitch a ride on a pickup truck for day labor. The better skilled have their own vehicles and carry family with them, full up, every seat, to the fields for the day. You see them in the summer time, weeding and trimming trees or picking.

While high tech is dying down in the Bay Area, desperate families are looking for new careers. Manufacturing machines is not it. Food is, and farming will offer a more consistent profit, done right, than working for someone else at minimum wage, Part Time, with no benefits. Any person considering this had best learn Spanish to a conversational level, just to get along with others practically. There is no way around this. It is a reality. Like kitchens in most restaurants, the guy you're working with is Spanish speaking and probably not born here.

The big limitation is drought. Right now we're having drought. Its lovely weather, don't get me wrong. 75'F in January. 45'F nights. Lovely. Sunny and warm. But we need rain, lots of it, to refill the reservoirs for next summer's agriculture and the dry season which runs from May to November is also the best growing season. Almost two seasons. And sometimes three depending on crops. Cold weather crops grown in summer up North are winter crops here, for profit or soil improvement. They call Alfalfa "green manure" and you till it back into the ground before it goes to seed. This forces more nitrogen and organic matter into the soil so the next crop that's nitrogen hungry, like corn or tomatoes, will flourish. Soybeans are a good oil crop and fix nitrogen into the soil for later crops too. That oil can be sold or burned as biodiesel.

Someday there will be smaller agricultural robots with limited brains to work marginal lands like people used to for higher wages, likely increasing used arable land by double. There's lots of unused arable land because it is hard to use a big combine or tractor to till and maintain it compared to giant irrigated circles with minimal labor to care for.

I think farming is going to be an important topic this year. We should all be paying attention to it. Even if you never want to till the soil or plant something, there will be jobs for farm mechanics and tractor repairmen and the welders and machinists who keep farming equipment running. Low paying, usually, but lots of consistent work. Better than being unemployed in the Bay Area.